A map of calculated peak sea-level height produced by the tsunami from the 2011 Japan earthquake as it spread across the Pacific Ocean.

Eighteen earthquakes of seismic magnitudes greater than 8.0 have struck around the world in just the past decade—an annual rate 2.5 times greater than had been experienced over the previous century. Join Dr. Thorne Lay, professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at University of California, Santa Cruz, as he discusses how analysis of these earthquakes forced researchers to revise longstanding ideas about the behavior of the Earth beneath our feet.

About the Speaker:

Thorne Lay is Distinguished Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of California Santa Cruz, where he has been located since 1990. His research area is seismology, and includes studies of large earthquake ruptures, internal structure of the Earth, and application of seismology to support monitoring of nuclear testing treaties. He is an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences. He received the Harry Fielding Reid Medal of the Seismological Society of America and the Macelwane Medal of the American Geophysical Union.

The Annual IRIS/SSA Lecture Series is presented in collaboration with the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology and the Seismological Society of America.